Like the Kincade Fire, a blaze raging through the forests and vineyards of Northern California, the Tick Fire in Santa Clarita was driven by strong autumn winds. The fire was about 5% contained.
Authorities ordered all public schools in the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys to be closed Friday, and the closing of a major freeway snarled rush-hour traffic.
Kathryn Barger, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, said a limited number of people were allowed back into their homes late Thursday.
Dangerous winds were forecast to continue Friday in the Los Angeles area, challenging the hundreds of firefighters deployed to contain the Tick Fire, the National Weather Service said.
Winds in the mountains will have gusts between 50-60 mph and relative humidity will remain in the single digits, said Curt Kaplan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service who covers the Los Angeles area.
“That’s going to cause extreme fire behavior with rapid rate of spread,” Kaplan said.
Although the winds were expected to subside Friday evening, they were forecast to return Sunday.
“The combination of very dry conditions with strong winds and dry fuels — it’s just not a good combination,” Kaplan said.
The threatening weather conditions arriving over the weekend prompted the state’s largest electrical utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, to warn of another large-scale power outage that will affect areas north and east of San Francisco.
Peak fire season is far from over in California, although the wildfires this year have been less catastrophic as those of the past two years. Fewer than 300 structures have burned in wildfires so far this year compared with more than 23,000 last year. And around 163,000 acres have burned this year, according to Cal Fire, the state’s fire agency, compared with 1.6 million acres in 2018.
16,000 acres of Sonoma County were engulfed by the Kincade Fire.
The Kincade Fire had destroyed 49 structures and burned 16,000 acres in Sonoma County as of Thursday night, according to Cal Fire. About 1,300 firefighters were battling the blaze, which was about 5% contained.
Evacuation orders covered 2,000 people, according to authorities in Sonoma County. Wind gusts blew the fire through forests, leaving firefighters with little opportunity to stop or slow down the walls of flames after the fire began Wednesday night. Sonoma County was ravaged in 2017, when the Sonoma Complex fires killed 24 and burned more than 170 square miles.
The power was on at an IHOP in Napa, and it became a refuge for some who lacked it at home. Barbara Tonsberg, 93, a former church organist and high school math teacher, was eating pancakes because there was not much to do with the electricity cut off at her home in nearby Angwin.
“Drying your hair doesn’t work too well without power,” Tonsberg said. “I’m tired of cold food, but there’s nothing you can do but deal with it.”
As she spoke, her son, Wayne, got a call on his cellphone. It was an automated message from PG&E.; He was advised that the company could not predict when their power would return — and that it might go out again Saturday.
A utility is investigating whether an equipment malfunction contributed to the Kincade Fire.
Pacific Gas & Electric said it was investigating whether its equipment had been involved in stoking the Kincade Fire. PG&E; said it had become aware that a “transmission-level outage” occurred in the area around the time the fire began.
By early Friday, electricity had been restored to most of the utility’s 179,000 customers who were without power Thursday. Most of the remaining customers without power were in Kern County, where high winds continued to blow.
But the utility issued a fresh warning early Friday that meteorologists expected another round of high winds to affect Northern California, beginning Saturday. The company said the weather conditions and the time needed to restore any damaged equipment could leave customers without power for more than 48 hours. PG&E; said it was trying to contact customers who might be affected by telephone, text and email.
Bill Johnson, PG&E; Corp.’s chief executive officer, said this weekend’s weather could bring the strongest winds of the wildfire season so far.
Separately, Southern California Edison had reduced the number of customers it had blacked out to just over 21,000 but kept almost 400,000 customers under warning for possible power shut-off.
This article originally appeared in
.